Behind the Scenes takes detailed look at how the Austrian timber giant Holzindustrie Schweighofer, one of the largest wood processors in Romania, continues to fuel the destruction of Europe’s last old growth forests, in spite of five years of pledges not to source timber from national parks or protected areas.

Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rulemaking that will allow the US market to transition away from hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent super greenhouse gases, in new household refrigerators and freezers.

As a meeting of the International Maritime Organization’s Marine Environment Protection Committee opens today in London (MEPC72), the Clean Arctic Alliance called on IMO member states to support a proposal to ban heavy fuel oil (HFO) from Arctic shipping.

Peruvian forest authorities are weakening the tools and inspections necessary to prevent illegal timber trade, in the face of overwhelming evidence that Peru’s exports to the United States, China, Mexico and 15 other countries contained high percentages of illegal or high-risk wood. Moment of Truth, a new report from the non-profit Environmental Investigation Agency, demonstrates the extent of this illegal trade and the backlash against attempts to fight it.

Today state Senator Ricardo Lara introduced the California Cooling Act, a landmark proposal to reduce climate impacts of the cooling sector, which could lead to avoidance of 17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually by 2030. EIA and NASRC applaud the bill and highlight the positive outcomes of a proposed incentive program for low-GWP refrigerants.

This week, in response to the dire rosewood crisis in West Africa and particularly in Nigeria, the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) informed its 183 member countries of exceptional control measures.

In a recent field investigation in Romania, EIA found evidence of illegal logging in Romania’s second-largest national park linked to the Austrian timber giant Holzindustrie Schweighofer. The FSC considers whether to uphold timber giant’s de-certification.

Global efforts to dramatically reduce super greenhouse gases in the fight against climate change saw a major advance today as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol got the go ahead to crack down on harmful hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

One of the largest timber smuggling operations in history is revealed today by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in a report that shows how over 1.4 million illegal rosewood logs from Nigeria, worth US$300 million, were laundered into China.

A new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals that merely a few multinational fast food and beverage companies in India could avoid up to 38 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, the same as taking 8.5 million cars off the road for a year, by not using HFCs for cooling.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) praised AEON’s official announcement that it will phase out all sales of elephant ivory by tenants in all of AEON’s numerous malls across Japan by March 2020.